Subscribers of wireless communications systems are increasing to phenomenal numbers with more than forty-five million subscribers in the United States and one-hundred and twenty million subscribers worldwide. As new service providers enter the wireless communication market, the level of competition for old service providers increases to retain existing customer base while attracting new subscribers. To maintain continued growth of subscriber numbers and revenue levels, service providers are offering value-added services to their subscribers.
The Internet explosion has provided service providers of wired and wireless communications systems with a direction for developing value-added services. Currently, there are more than fifty million users of the Internet. Access to the Internet is typically via a wired communication network. However, wired Internet access requires some type of physical connection between the users and the wired communications network. Thus, the mobility of users accessing the Internet via a wired connection is severely limited. By contrast, access to the Internet via a wireless communications system offers a great deal of mobility to users/subscribers. However, wireless Internet access can be prohibitively expensive to most users/subscribers. Specifically, wireless communications systems, such as those based on the GSM and IS-95 CDMA standards, are limited in air interface access speeds (i.e., narrow bandwidth) and are subjected to an error prone transmission environment. For example, data transmitted over an IS-95 CDMA based wireless communication systems may be subject to a 3% or more bit error rate. Such limitations increase the amount of time required for successful data transfers between the Internet and the user/subscriber which, in turn, increases the cost of a wireless telephone call to the user/subscriber. Accordingly, there exists a need to improve data transfer performance (i.e., reduce transmission time) over communication networks connecting the Internet or other data networks to the user/subscriber.